rockets – Page 32 – Aerospace Projects Review Blog

Non-Nuclear Polaris

Jan 292017

Some time back there was an EBay auction for a Polaris display model with a difference. The missile itself seemed normal enough, but the warhead was distinctly unusual. It was a plexiglas cone filled with small metal spheres:

Assuming that this model is truly official (it seems to be, but who knows), then it would appear that Lockheed gave some thought to a Polaris armed with biological or chemical warheads. I would speculate that this probably isn’t a biological weapon… biowar agents are usually fairly slow and you generally want to distribute them quietly, while a SLBM is terribly fast and not at all sneaky. My guess is that the metal spheres are the M139 bomblets, designed to carry 590 grams of Sarin nerve gas. The M139 was loaded on the Honest John and Pershing missiles in the 1960’s. The preceding design was the M134 bomblet, some 334 of which could be carried by an Honest John, as shown in the display piece below:

I have doubts that the Navy would load Sarin or bioweapons on board a submarine… seems to be just asking for trouble. Perhaps this was for a land-transportable missile, carried on a trailer behind a truck. Lockheed tried to sell just such a thing a few times with no success.

Early glideback booster

launch vehicles, rockets, space shuttle, space station, spacecraft, spaceplane 2 Responses »

Jan 282017

Below is a piece of Convair art from the SDASM Flickr account showing an early (1959) concept for a space booster with a glideback manned first stage. It’s a little unclear what’s going on with the second stage… the cutaway *seems* to show a space station-like payload where you’d expect to find the second stage engine.

See the SDASM Flickr page for a higher rez version.

Fat Atlas

launch vehicles, rockets No Responses »

Jan 262017

Just sold on EBay (not to me, sadly) is a kinda rough Topping display model of a little known proposed variant of the Atlas space launcher, the SLV-3X. This design had a widened body, from ten feet to 12 feet, 7 inches. This allowed for more propellant to be carried without lengthening the vehicle, meaning that the existing launch infrastructure could be used. Additionally, the MA-5 sustainer rocket engine would be replaced with a higher thrust H-1D engine. See HERE for stats.

The SDASM Flickr account has a nice illustration of the SLV-3X/Centaur. See their site for the higher rez image.

Polaris

hi-rez, nukes, Patreon, rockets 1 Response »

Jan 222017

Here’s an interesting illustration of the Polaris sea launched ballistic missile, taken from a technical manual. I’ve uploaded the full-rez version to the APR Patreon Extras Dropbox folder for 2017-01, so if you are interested, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

Nuclear Propulsion In Space (NASA Film)

launch vehicles, nukes, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Dec 282016

I’d posted this YouTube video a few years ago, but I’ve found that not only was the video yanked, the whole account associated with it was nuked. Hmmmph.

A film about NERVA (Nuclear Energy for Rocket Vehicle Applications), 1968.

Provides a basic description of nuclear rockets, plus some art, animation and diagrams of nuclear propelled space vehicles along with footage of test firings.

Early Saturn C-5 Color Art

hi-rez, launch vehicles, Patreon, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Dec 062016

From the NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center, December, 1961: An illustration of the forthcoming Saturn C-5 S-IC stage. This appears to be *mostly* as the S-IC would be built, but there are some detectable differences. Missing are the four small (and apparently superfluous) stabilizing fins that appeared on the outboard engine fairings. And located at the front are the eight retro rockets that would end up inside the aforementioned engine fairings.

This illustration came via EBay. The full-resolution scan (all 15+ megabytes of it) is available in the 2016-12 Dropbox folder for APR patrons. If you’d like to gain access to this and two years worth of high-rez aerospace goodies like this, as well as help out the effort to procure and preserve aerospace goodies like this, please consider joining the APR Patreon.

Shuttle 2 Art

hi-rez, launch vehicles, Patreon, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane 1 Response »

Dec 022016

A late 1980’s concept for NASA by Frassanito & Associates for a “Shuttle 2.” Clearly derived from Space Shuttle general ideas, it features a number of important differences, including:

A separable cockpit for use in emergencies (a concept given substantial study in the wake of Challenger)
Separate liquid hydrogen drop tanks above the wings
No boosters, but instead LH2/LOX engines mounted under the ET (presumably SSMEs, which appear to be in individual re-entry and recovery “capsules”)

It’s not certain, but the ET looks bigger than the standard STS ET. Which would make sense given that it needs to be filled with substantially more propellant to take the place of the SRBs.

This piece of art, and two more providing a closer look at the orbiter, are available in high-rez for APR patrons on the APR “Extras” Dropbox folder, under the 2016-12 APR Extras sub-folder. If you’re interested, take a look at the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon page and consider joining!

Lifting Body Mockup Photo 2

hypersonic, launch vehicles, rockets, space shuttle, spacecraft, spaceplane No Responses »

Nov 172016

Here’s another photo of the lifting body mockup I showed a month ago. Here you can see that the full display – apparently a USAF public relations item – included a more or less full length booster, presumably a Titan II. It’s not the best angle, but it *kinda* looks like this might be just the first stage of the Titan II (or a round tube resembling one) without a second stage. It’s doubtful that there was ever a plan to launch a one-man lifting body atop a single Titan II first stage; it would be distinctly suborbital, and without some deep throttling the acceleration would probably be pretty crushing.

When i last posted this, I mentioned that photos of this were shown “many times.” I wrote that because I remember seeing such photos… but once I started actually looking for them they turn out to be rather hard to find. I imagine I must’ve seen the photos in 1960’s magazines or such. Two more not terribly helpful photos are available HERE and HERE.

APR Patreon Back Issue Catalog NOW AVAILABLE

bomber, Dyna Soar, fighter, hi-rez, hypersonic, jetliner, launch vehicles, Patreon, Patreon catalog, rockets, space shuttle, space station, spacecraft, spaceplane, stealth, transports, VTOL No Responses »

Oct 302016

I’ve been running the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon project for a bit over two years now. Every month, Patrons get rewarded with sets of aerospace history stuff… currently, one large-format diagram or piece of artwork, three documents and, depending on level of patronage, an all-new CAD diagram of an aerospace subject of interest. More than two dozen such packages have been put together so far and distributed. Given that you can get in on this for as little as $1.50 a month (for 125-dpi scans… $4/month for full-rez 300 dpi scans) and you get at least four items, that’s a pretty good bargain compared to the individual aerospace drawings and documents.

Patrons who signed up after the process got underway can now get “back issues” of the previously released rewards packages. A catalog of more than the first years worth has just been posted; each month will see an updated catalog posted for Patrons to order from. So if you are interested, check out the APR Patreon page to see how to sign up; if you are already a patron, check out the catalog here.

Another Orion in the wild

nukes, rockets, spacecraft 1 Response »

Oct 162016

The History Channel has a new series, “Doomsday: 10 Ways he World will End.” Each episode describes some scientifically possible doomsday scenario… the first episode had a dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, the second had the Earth swallowed by a supermassive black hole. (One of these is more likely than the other…). The third episode, aired just a few days ago, has a rogue planet with the mass of Neptune plow into the Earth.

At the end of the last episode, discussion was made of the possibility of mankind surviving Earth getting steamrolled by an interstellar interloper by sending an emergency colonization mission to Mars. It was only a couple of minutes, mostly illustrated with stock footage of modern launch vehicles being assembled. But one of the talking heads suggested that the means of getting to mars would be via Orion nuclear pulse vehicle. A *very* brief shot of the Orion vehicle zipping past was included. The Orion CG model was obviously rather quickly slapped together. It was pretty generic, but on the whole looked reasonable enough. But for some reason the craft was given an unnecessary and impossible to justify rocket nozzle smack in the middle of the pusher plate. I took a few snapshots of the TV screen with my cameraphone… seemed good enough under the circumstances.

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